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Frankly, I'm glad the whole "consistent UI is king" era has ended. It largely grew as a reaction to the DOS era when everything was keyboard shortcuts and memor

by jsight 5y ago

Frankly, I'm glad the whole "consistent UI is king" era has ended. It largely grew as a reaction to the DOS era when everything was keyboard shortcuts and memorization was key. All the differing approaches made using different application suites maddening! But then we moved into the GUI and everyone thought it was important not just to have the same shortcuts or even the same menu layouts, but literally the same design language in icon design. It trained people that switching platforms was much harder than it should be. In reality, noone is struggling with the web because of minor layout issues. Consistency isn't king, good design is.

thrower123 5y ago
Consistent, good design is king-of-kings. I weep often because I can see that people are making mistakes that make software less useable because they are either ignorant or arrogant and fail to uphold the guidelines that have been worked out over three decades of blood, sweat and tears.
swiley 5y ago
IMO: having a menu bar with some moderate similarity between apps is good enough for discoverability. Consistency is nice but it should never ever be done at the cost of any other features.
pavlov 5y ago
> “In reality, noone is struggling with the web” How do you know? Is there usability research to support this claim? Probably not, since practically no one does actual usability testing anymore. Product managers just slap something together and then start A/B testing to fudge the narrow metrics that they need for their performance reviews.
- jsight 5y ago
  Do you need any? Do you really think people struggle at going between CNN, Foxnews, and MSNBC? Ok, things get harder when we talk about shopping carts, logins, and other details, but even there not all good flows have to look the same in literally every way in order to be usable.
  - MagnumOpus 5y ago
    People probably struggle at extracting information efficiently from all of those, yes. That is also probably exacerbated by the fact that all of these sites optimise for “engagement” and ad impressions rather than efficiency. At least CNN still has lite.cnn.com as a low-fat alternative. (Slightly too slim, otherwise everyone would use it…)

by jsight 5y ago

thrower123 5y ago

Consistent, good design is king-of-kings. I weep often because I can see that people are making mistakes that make software less useable because they are either ignorant or arrogant and fail to uphold the guidelines that have been worked out over three decades of blood, sweat and tears.

swiley 5y ago

IMO: having a menu bar with some moderate similarity between apps is good enough for discoverability. Consistency is nice but it should never ever be done at the cost of any other features.

pavlov 5y ago

> “In reality, noone is struggling with the web” How do you know? Is there usability research to support this claim? Probably not, since practically no one does actual usability testing anymore. Product managers just slap something together and then start A/B testing to fudge the narrow metrics that they need for their performance reviews.

jsight 5y ago
Do you need any? Do you really think people struggle at going between CNN, Foxnews, and MSNBC? Ok, things get harder when we talk about shopping carts, logins, and other details, but even there not all good flows have to look the same in literally every way in order to be usable.
- MagnumOpus 5y ago
  People probably struggle at extracting information efficiently from all of those, yes. That is also probably exacerbated by the fact that all of these sites optimise for “engagement” and ad impressions rather than efficiency. At least CNN still has lite.cnn.com as a low-fat alternative. (Slightly too slim, otherwise everyone would use it…)